Realism In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

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Among the English poets Coleridge stands out supreme to conjure a weird wherever necessary in the poem. In spite of many improbabilities in the poem we are compelled to believe the things because, we are fascinated and gripped by his strangeness and air of mystery. He has succeeded in the task of imparting to the supernatural an air of naturalness and realism. When we read the poem we are not conscious at all that there is a piling up of mysterious and improbable details. Supernaturalism in Coleridge is not only the presentation of sorrow by external devices but also its effect on human conduct and behavior. It is an exploration of what Walter Pater calls, “soul love” the deepest emotions of the soul are explored by the experience of the supernatural. The incidents and emotions arising from them are so full of human interest that they acquire dramatic truth and produce a suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic truth. Mariner’s emotions in “The Ancient Mariner” are expressed with an air of reality. It is remarkable that super natural in Coleridge appeared not objectively but psychologically too. Reality does not consist merely in the external appearance of the things perceptible to the senses, …show more content…

The modern mind, so minutely self scrutinizing, if it is to be effected at all by the sense of the supernatural, needs to be more finely touched than is possible in the older romantic presentment of it. It is this finer, more delicately marvelous supernaturalism, fruit of his own more delicate psychology that Coleridge infuses into romantic adventure, it also is anew or reviving thing in English literature, and with fines of wearied effect in the” Ancient Mariner” unknown in those older, more simple romantic legends and

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